Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Summary

Nick lists all of the people who attended Gatsby’s parties
that summer, a roll call of the nation’s most wealthy and powerful
people. He then describes a trip that he took to New York with Gatsby
to eat lunch. As they drive to the city, Gatsby tells Nick about
his past, but his story seems highly improbable. He claims, for
instance, to be the son of wealthy, deceased parents from
the Midwest. When Nick asks which Midwestern city he is from, Gatsby
replies, “San Francisco.” Gatsby then lists a long and preposterously
detailed set of accomplishments: he claims to have been educated
at Oxford, to have collected jewels in the capitals of Europe, to
have hunted big game, and to have been awarded medals in World War
I by multiple European countries. Seeing Nick’s skepticism, Gatsby
produces a medal from Montenegro and a picture of himself playing
cricket at Oxford.

Gatsby’s car speeds through the valley of ashes
and enters the city. When a policeman pulls Gatsby over for speeding,
Gatsby shows him a white card and the policeman apologizes for bothering
him. In the city, Gatsby takes Nick to lunch and introduces him
to Meyer Wolfshiem, who, he claims, was responsible for fixing the 1919 World
Series. Wolfshiem is a shady character with underground business
connections. He gives Nick the impression that the source of Gatsby’s
wealth might be unsavory, and that Gatsby may even have ties to
the sort of organized crime with which Wolfshiem is associated.

After the lunch in New York, Nick sees Jordan Baker, who
finally tells him the details of her mysterious conversation with
Gatsby at the party. She relates that Gatsby told her that he is
in love with Daisy Buchanan. According to Jordan, during the war,
before Daisy married Tom, she was a beautiful young girl in Louisville,
Kentucky, and all the military officers in town were in love with
her. Daisy fell in love with Lieutenant Jay Gatsby, who was stationed
at the base near her home. Though she chose to marry Tom after Gatsby
left for the war, Daisy drank herself into numbness the night before
her wedding, after she received a letter from Gatsby. Daisy has
apparently remained faithful to her husband throughout their marriage, but
Tom has not. Jordan adds that Gatsby bought his mansion in West
Egg solely to be near Daisy. Nick remembers the night he saw Gatsby
stretching his arms out to the water and realizes that the green
light he saw was the light at the end of Daisy’s dock. According
to Jordan, Gatsby has asked her to convince Nick to arrange a reunion
between Gatsby and Daisy. Because he is terrified that Daisy will
refuse to see him, Gatsby wants Nick to invite Daisy to tea. Without
Daisy’s knowledge, Gatsby intends to come to the tea at Nick’s house
as well, surprising her and forcing her to see him.

Analysis

Though Nick’s first impression of Gatsby is of his boundless
hope for the future, Chapter 4 concerns itself largely with the
mysterious question of Gatsby’s past. Gatsby’s description of his
background to Nick is a daunting puzzle—though he rattles off a
seemingly far-fetched account of his grand upbringing and heroic
exploits, he produces what appears to be proof of his story. Nick
finds Gatsby’s story “threadbare” at first, but he eventually accepts
at least part of it when he sees the photograph and the medal. He
realizes Gatsby’s peculiarity, however. In calling him a “character,”
he highlights Gatsby’s strange role as an actor.

The luncheon with Wolfshiem gives Nick his first unpleasant impression
that Gatsby’s fortune may not have been obtained honestly. Nick
perceives that if Gatsby has connections with such shady characters
as Wolfshiem, he might be involved in organized crime or bootlegging.
It is important to remember the setting of The Great Gatsby, in
terms of both the symbolic role of the novel’s physical locations
and the book’s larger attempt to capture the essence of America
in the mid-1920s. The pervasiveness of bootlegging
and organized crime, combined with the burgeoning stock market and vast
increase in the wealth of the general public during this era, contributed
largely to the heedless, excessive pleasure-seeking and sense of
abandon that permeate The Great Gatsby. For Gatsby,
who throws the most sumptuous parties of all and who seems richer
than anyone else, to have ties to the world of bootleg alcohol would
only make him a more perfect symbol of the strange combination of moral
decadence and vibrant optimism that Fitzgerald portrays as the spirit
of 1920s America.

On the other hand, Jordan’s story paints Gatsby as a lovesick, innocent
young soldier, desperately trying to win the woman of his dreams.
Now that Gatsby is a full-fledged character in the novel, the bizarre
inner conflict that enables Nick to feel such contradictory admiration
and repulsion for him becomes fully apparent—whereas Gatsby the
lovesick soldier is an attractive figure, representative of hope
and authenticity, Gatsby the crooked businessman, representative
of greed and moral corruption, is not.